Tesla offers Australia a helping hand to solve its massive power outages

Australia desperately needs within the next 2 years more installations of wind and solar energy plants to avert severe blackouts.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has offered to save Australians from their dependency from the state by installing battery storage worth 100 megawatt hours valued at $25 million within 100 days of signing a contract.

Musk’s offer comes in the wake of Southern Australia reeling from a blackout that left its industry crippled for nearly two weeks and stoked fears of outages across the nation as energy supplies in the country is very tight.

Musk’s offer was made through a social media outlet and the government responded to it by saying, it could consider buying such a battery backed system by Tesla.

“The government stands ready through ARENA and the CEFC to work with companies with serious proposals to support the deployment of more storage,” said Josh Frydenberg, Australia’s Environment and Energy Minister.

Musk made the offer in response to a comment made on social media by Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of Atlassian Corp, an Australian software company. Cannon-Brookes had stated, he would be willing to look for political support and funding options if Tesla could provide batteries that would solve South Australia’s problems.

Musk responded by tweeting: “Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?”

Musk quoted a price of $250 per kilowatt hour for a 100 megawatt hour system, which implies a price of $25 million for the battery packs.

“You’re on mate. Give me 7 days to try and sort out politics & funding,” tweeted back Cannon-Brookes.

Cannon-Brookes has disclosed that he has been flooded with calls after the twitter exchange and was eager to get the plan rolling.

“My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing. The support is flooding in, both from individuals in terms of ‘Hell yes!’ and from corporates who are asking: ‘Can we buy power? Can we contribute dollars?’,” said Cannon-Brookes.

“We have been talking with a number of large-scale battery providers about potential storage solutions, including in South Australia. To the extent Tesla is interested, we’ll also talk with them,” said Oliver Yates, Clean Energy Finance Corp’s Chief Executive in an emailed statement.